


Love

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many roads to power.</p>
<p>Written for the asoiafkinkmeme on LiveJournal</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love

When she was out of danger, the Maester permitted Bethany to nurse her son. He had too long been in the care of wetnurses that she had selected from her sickbed, judging harshly the village girls that her maids led before her. Even in her weakness her regard was still imposing, her voice just as controlled as it had been before the birth that had undone her. She was suspicious, Bethany, of such methods, lacking faith in anyone but herself in her son’s rearing through these perilous early years, and the all too recent pain of loss, his brothers who preceded him, cold in their cradles, now dust in a crypt, caused her heart to clench with suspicion and resentment as the healthiest of the bunch pressed her Domeric to an alien bosom, her plump arms carefully positioning the infant to give suck. When Bethany ordered her out of the room, it was not to rest, as she had said, but to prevent the girl from seeing the tears that sprung to her eyes. 

It would never do to be seen as weak. 

And now she was no longer weak, but healed, clutching her son almost too tightly, her eyes fastened on him as securely as his mouth fastened on her breast, drawing just as much life from his presence as he did from hers. She paid little attention to the attentions of her sister in her widow’s weeds, or her husband, a silent presence in the room who hovered just behind his family with a subtle menace that did little to vex Bethany. 

Barbrey was at her needlework, her clever fingers embroidering linens for her nephew, an ornate monogram criss-crossing the edge of a blanket in the palest pink, carefully dyed to match the sigil that seemed almost too imposing, too fearsome for just a babe in arms. She smiled as she watched her sister tend to the baby, and Bethany returned the expression with a slight curling of her lip, but soon returned her attention to Domeric, who had meanwhile had his fill, and turned to slumber in his mother’s embrace. 

“Such a powerful thing, and so small,” Barbrey said softly, her voice echoing too much in the hushed chambers of the Dreadfort. Things were still there, her sister and brother-in-law dwelling in a detached sort of stasis, seemingly untouched by worry, by gossip, by fashion, by the world that bustled outside of the walls of their holdfast. She observed, not without some jealousy, how Roose rested a hand on Bethany’s shoulder, a slight touch that she paid little mind to, as a matter of course, but one deeply laden with significance. _This is my wife, this is my child, my family. This is what you have been denied, Barbrey. This is what you shall never have._

She shuddered. 

“He nearly killed his mother,” Beth mused, contemplating Domeric as she rocked him gently. “There are few who could claim such a feat.”

“Hush, Beth,” her husband said, an admonishment of sorts, although it did not signify in the neutral expression on his face, nor in the ghost of a smile that threatened to twist his lips. “Do not speak of such things.” 

“You are right, sister,” she said, her eyes darting to Roose, “such power in such a small thing.”

Barbrey nodded. “And it will continue. For one day, you will be gone, and he will rule. He will supplant you both, without doing anything but living long enough.” Her voice was bitter, and she intended truly to wound without thinking, but neither of them were perturbed by her declaration. 

“All too true,” Roose said, sitting next to Bethany on the low couch, watching Domeric in slumber. “And how better to rule than through caution. Caution and fear, for such things keep us alive in a life full of treachery.”

Bethany shook her head at his remark, but kept her silence. 

“And this is what you intend for the boy?” Barbrey asked, “a life of paranoia, always looking behind him, seeing enemies in every shadow, poison in every glance? You are far too suspicious, Roose.”

His expression darkened slightly. “And with cause, Lady Dustin.” 

She winced at the address. 

“Those are the bricks that bind this castle, the wall that protects us,” and his grip tightened on Bethany, who turned her head to meet his eyes, her face intense, her expression hardening. “We are not well-loved.”

There was much implied by that, and Barbrey longed to provoke, to probe, but she held her tongue for her sister’s sake, thinking on the rumors that she heard now and again, the rumors that they’d always heard in the Rills about their Bolton cousins and their proclivities. She did not put stock in idle gossip but there was more to things than that. 

“You are both wrong,” Bethany said, and although her words were courteous and her voice soft, they both seemed to pause in shock that she had even spoken. “It isn’t caution, my lord,” and she turned to Roose with an apologetic smile, “nor inheritance,” and she shook her head at her sister, who had abandoned her needlework for the sake of debate. “The most powerful thing is love.” She pressed her lips to her son’s brow, soft as a whisper, delicate as a breeze, in order not to wake the child. “It is love that keeps this child, love which binds him, which protects him.” And then her expression darkened and her voice grew strained. “I would kill any who would seek to stand in his way to happiness.”

And neither of them could say anything to that, for both knew it to be true.


End file.
